


Contract

by Sleigh



Category: Lux-Pain
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Gen, M/M, Madoka Magica AU, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-16
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-18 19:14:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/564339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sleigh/pseuds/Sleigh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For years, Atsuki Saijo has wanted to avenge the death of his parents, but hasn’t had the ability to do so. When a man offers him the powers he needs, Atsuki is willing to make a deal with him to gain them. But a mysterious person from one of Atsuki’s nightmares keeps trying to intervene… [Madoka AU, on an indefinite hiatus]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nightmares

Atsuki hadn’t dreamt in years. Whenever he went to sleep, he’d always wake up the next morning with no recollection of any sort of dream if he was lucky. When he wasn’t as lucky, he’d wake up in the middle of the night after a horrible nightmare, struggling to breathe and calm down and get everything he’d seen out of his head. Sometimes he only saw hazy images of blood. Other times he felt like he was sitting with his father as he died again, and the way he smiled and said, “The world is full of sorrow” felt just as real as it had the first time Atsuki heard it. Sometimes he only heard screams and screeching tires and the sound of glass breaking. No matter how many times he had those same nightmares, he always tried and failed to save his family in them. The dreams were always just as overwhelmingly painful as they were the first fifty times he had to endure them, and they always ended the same way.

Every night, it was the same nightmare over and over, until one night it was something else entirely.

The first thing Atsuki knew, he was somewhere dark, somewhere empty, somewhere he’d never been before. Everything was eerie and empty, besides a fight that was going on in front of him. Beyond his reach, someone was fighting a huge metal monster all alone. Atsuki couldn’t see every detail from this distance, but it looked like a dark-haired man a bit older than him was trying to take down the monster, and he was losing. He didn’t seem to be making the smallest dents on it no matter how hard he tried.

“It’s too bad, isn’t it?”

Atsuki turned to look behind him when he heard the voice. A man with silvery blond hair dressed in all white walked up behind him and stood next to him. He gave Atsuki a small smile. “He’s going to lose. He can’t beat it on his own, and if he loses, we’re all doomed.” The man had a pleasant voice, and didn't sound the slightest bit upset over what was happening.

Atsuki looked away from the man for just a moment to look at the fight again, then looked back at him. “Can’t you help him? Do something.”

“ _I_ can’t help him. But you could,” the man replied, still smiling as he looked at Atsuki, then looked at the fight again. “If you want to.” The way he said it sounded like less of a casual offer and more of a guilt trip.

“How?” Atsuki asked, “I can’t fight things like that…” Atsuki didn’t even know what that thing was, but he was fairly certain he wouldn’t be able to scratch it before it killed him. The man that was fighting it already had to be far stronger than he was, but he was still losing.

The man in white’s smile brightened. “I could give you the power to fight things like that. I could give you the power to save him and save this entire world. All you have to do is make a contract with me.” He looked Atsuki directly in the eyes and held out his hand to him. “So what do you say?”

Atsuki woke up trembling, but he didn’t know why. What was so unsettling about the man in white, and what was so painful about seeing that stranger losing that fight? He didn’t understand his reaction or the nightmare itself at all. A simple bad dream wasn’t anything to get worked up over, anyway, no matter how vivid it was.

That’s all it was, anyway. A dream. A dream he was making too big of a deal out of. Atsuki got out of bed and got dressed and tried to pretend it never happened, just like he did with every other nightmare he had. But like his other nightmares, he couldn’t escape the feeling that what he saw was real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um wow hi I'm sorry this happened? I'm going to try to actually finish a chapter fic for once, wow! Let's see how I do.
> 
> This is obviously a Madoka Magica AU! And I'm finally writing my OTP, how exciting. The chapters will be short and updates will be inconsistent, but I hope you stick with it anyway. I may end up having to add a Graphic Depictions of Violence warning, just so you know.
> 
> I don't really have much else to say with this one. It'll be x-posted to my LJ and ff.net as usual, and it'll follow the Madoka plot for the most part... so if you've seen that, it should be easy to guess what will happen. I know this won't be very well-written, but if I'm as critical with my fun writing as I am for my schoolwork and stuff, I'll die from stress. I hope you like it anyway.
> 
> p.s: Thurston Moore's 'Demolished Thoughts' = wonderful writing music


	2. Strangers

Atsuki’s morning was so mundane, it wasn’t easy to forget the dream.  There wasn’t anything to distract him from thoughts of it until he started working and was immediately ambushed by a young girl he worked with, Natsuki. “You look so cute today Atsuki! You’re so adorable it’s not even fair!” she told him.

Atsuki had been working at the same place, a government organization called FORT, for years. He and Natsuki were together even longer than that, when both of them were at the same orphanage. Even if they only did boring office work at FORT, it was much better than still being back there.

“Did you hear, did you hear? We’re getting a new coworker today, someone new was hired! I hope it’s a girl my age…” Natsuki rambled on so quickly Atsuki could barely keep up, but his mind drifted as he wondered what the new person would be like. He wondered if it would be another teenage orphan, since FORT seemed to have a habit of taking them in and giving them jobs. There were plenty of adults in the organization too, however. There was no way to guess what this person would be like.

Natsuki pulled Atsuki out of his thoughts again pretty quickly. “She’s probably here by now! Let’s go see if we can find her, come on!” Natsuki grabbed Atsuki’s sleeve and tugged him along with her, in search of this new employee she already decided was a girl.

The two of them wandered through a few empty corridors, some rooms full of people working hard, like they should have been, and into one dead end in their maze-like workplace before they ran into their boss and someone new.

“Wow, you two have good timing,” their boss greeted them warmly as Natsuki hesitantly approached her, still pulling Atsuki along behind her. “I told you you’re getting someone new in your office, right?” She hadn’t told Atsuki, but Atsuki didn’t mention that, and she continued on. “This is him. His name is Liu Yee, and he’ll be working with you two from now on. Make him feel welcome, okay?”

Atsuki hadn’t been focusing as much on the new person as he had their boss and Natsuki. As soon as he made eye contact with him, he was suddenly hit with anxiety and confusion and recognition, because Liu Yee, the new employee, looked exactly like the man from his nightmare. He didn’t just look like him, he _was_ him. He had to be.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Natsuki,” Natsuki greeted him right away, but Liu ignored her and kept fixing Atsuki with a cold glare. Atsuki tried to maintain eye contact, but eventually he got too uncomfortable and glanced away at the wall.

“…Well… you two have work to do, don’t you?” Their boss finally said after a long, awkward pause, “Go get to work. You’ll have plenty of time to talk to Liu later, all right?” She smiled, and as soon as she was finished talking, Natsuki wasted no time in latching onto Atsuki’s sleeve again and pulling him off in the opposite direction. Atsuki glanced over his shoulder to look at Liu again, but his expression hadn’t changed and he hadn’t looked away from him.

The moment they rounded the nearest corner and were out of earshot, Natsuki started ranting. "Jeez, what a jerk! He didn't even reply to me, did you see that? And he was just glaring at you like some creep, what's his deal? I don't like him. He looked like he was going to hit you or something. He's so weird. Do you know him from somewhere? Did you make him really mad one time and now he's here to kill you?"

"No... I don't know," Atsuki replied, still trying to shake off the discomfort of meeting some really cold stranger that wasn’t actually a stranger at all. “I might know him.”

Natsuki stopped right away and loosened her tense grip on Atsuki’s sleeve, turning to look at him. “How? Is he really here to kill you? He’s not, is he?” She stared at Atsuki with wide eyes.

“I don’t think so. Don’t worry about it,” Atsuki replied, starting off towards the office again, expecting Natsuki to follow. He probably should have said something more comforting and reassuring than just ‘I don’t think so’, but he hadn’t thought of it before he spoke. “I just… had a dream with him in it once.” It sounded stupid, but Natsuki was his friend. She wasn’t allowed to judge him for it.

“Wait, that’s all it is? That’s stupid,” Natsuki responded anyway, following Atsuki and pouting. “How can you have a dream about someone you’ve never even met?”

Atsuki shrugged. He didn’t understand it himself.

“Well maybe it’s like fate or destiny. Maybe he murdered you in a past life, and now he’s been reincarnated and fate has brought him here and he’s come to kill you again!” Natsuki said a little too loudly for the workplace.

“I hope not,” Atsuki replied, pulling open the glass door to their office and holding it open for Natsuki. “It’s probably just a coincidence.”

Natsuki frowned. “Be careful anyway! It’s freaking me out that you know a creepy guy like that.”

Both of them got to work right after that, but Atsuki had a hard time concentrating. He still wasn’t sure what to make of this. If he wasn’t so frustratingly ordinary, he might have thought he’d unlocked some secret power to see the future, and that the nightmare was some sort of vision of their new co-worker. It was interesting to think about, but he knew it wasn’t possible. Powers like that didn’t exist, and even if they did, he’d be the last person to have them.

Even once he’d moved on from that thought, Atsuki still hadn’t stopped thinking about Liu. Atsuki knew someone would have to train him and help him find his way around the ridiculously confusing FORT facilities, but he tried to keep that towards the back of his mind and stay focused. He was hoping it would be his boss, or someone else in the office, anyone but him. Unfortunately, he was not a very lucky person.

He’d barely been working an hour when he felt the presence of someone behind him. He felt a quick rush of uneasiness before he turned and saw Liu standing behind him, looking at him so directly it made Atsuki uncomfortable again. “You’re supposed to give me a tour,” Liu said, sounding more detached than demanding. Atsuki didn’t get the feeling he was really interested in the tour, or maybe it was just that Liu didn’t want to be near him. He couldn’t tell.

“Okay,” Atsuki replied after a short pause he used to collect his thoughts. He stood up as Liu started for the door. He didn’t wait for Atsuki to actually lead him around, he just set off on his own. Atsuki didn’t know if he was more confused or annoyed by that.

As soon as Atsuki caught up to Liu in the hallway, Liu started walking in the direction Atsuki had planned to take him. That was convenient for him, at least. Both of them were silent for a long time as they walked down dimly-lit, empty hallways, before Atsuki tried to speak. “I’m—“

“Atsuki Saijo. I know that already,” Liu cut him off, not slowing down or looking back. His tone hadn’t changed.

Atsuki couldn’t remember ever mentioning his name to Liu. Their boss must have said something about him. Maybe she told Liu he kicked puppies for fun and ate kittens for breakfast, and that’s why Liu was being so distant and cold. “…Right. Well we’re almost to where we live,” Atsuki replied.

“I know that too,” Liu responded, sounding just as disinterested as he had before. He picked all the right turns and went through all the right doors without making a single mistake so far. It was unnerving to Atsuki that someone who supposedly hadn’t been here before seemed to know exactly where he was going.

Atsuki let another moment of silence pass between them before finally asking, “So how do you know where you’re going?”

Liu didn’t answer.

Atsuki didn’t have a response for complete silence. He kept following Liu, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say that wouldn’t sound like an interrogation. He didn’t need to get off to an even worse start with Liu by talking to him like that.

The silence just kept dragging on until Liu suddenly stopped. Atsuki stopped as well, and Liu turned to face him. “Atsuki, do you value your life?” Liu asked out of nowhere. Atsuki was scrambling to figure out why he was saying this all of a sudden, and to think of some way to answer him. Liu didn’t give him a chance to say anything. “Do you care about the people closest to you?” he continued, still making unwavering eye contact with Atsuki, “Do you care about the people that care about you?”

When Liu stopped talking, Atsuki realized it was his turn to talk now. He still hadn’t made sense of things. He remained as stoic as ever on the outside, but inside he was completely lost. What kind of questions were those? “Of course I do. Why?” Atsuki asked after a short pause, looking at Liu with more suspicion than anything else.

 “Then don’t try to change your life,” Liu went on, “You’ll just lose everything and hurt the people that care about you.”

It was a strange request, but not any more strange than the things Liu had already been saying. The consequences he gave were the most worrying things of all, but Atsuki wasn’t taking everything he said too seriously anyway. “I wasn’t planning to change anything,” Atsuki told him. He didn’t even know how he would change things.

Liu relaxed slightly, and Atsuki only then realized how tense he had been before. “Good. Go back to work. I can handle finding my way around.” Without waiting for any sort of response from Atsuki, Liu turned and kept walking.

Atsuki didn’t follow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow this chapter sucks I am so sorry wowowowow  
> I wasn't going to post it and I've been putting this off, but I finally sucked it up and decided to just post it anyway. It can't be the worst thing ever written. I think I had some writing notes for this, but I can't remember them anymore. I wrote this a while ago.
> 
> Anyway, the next chapter should be more interesting. AND there is a fic exchange going on here on tumblr if any of you would be interested. You don't need a tumblr to join, and it should be fun! http://foeyay.tumblr.com/post/36560187198/anyone-up-for-a-lux-pain-themed-secret-santa 
> 
> Apparently I lied when I said the chapters would be short, since this one is long and so far the next chapter is too. Expect that next chapter some time this week~


	3. Chapter 3

Atsuki didn’t see Liu the rest of the day. He assumed he was getting settled in somewhere and didn’t give it too much thought. By the time he sat down for dinner with Natsuki, Liu was the last thing on his mind. He paid attention to everything Natsuki went on and on about without saying much, just like they always did when they spoke. Natsuki had always been far more talkative than Atsuki, and luckily Atsuki was a good listener. Despite their differences, things worked out well for them. Natsuki complained all she wanted, and Atsuki listened carefully, only commenting when Natsuki stopped talking and waving her hands around to look at him expectantly, or when she asked him a question.

That evening, Natsuki spent most of her time complaining about how cold their boss kept their office, and how her fingers were going to freeze off, and how she wanted to try a less time-consuming hairstyle, and how she missed seeing sunshine. That was one of the major drawbacks of FORT; there were no windows in the building, and they weren’t allowed to leave. It was suspicious, but asking about it only got vague answers that weren’t really answers at all, so both of them had dropped it at this point. After having their questions dodged a dozen times, they knew they were never going to get real answers.

“Sometimes I wish my hair was short, because then it’d be so much easier to take care of,” Natsuki said while barely touching the noodles she’d ordered, “But I like having it long, even though it’s a lot of work. It’s just frustrating, I wish it could be long but easy to take care of. Do you—“

_“Help me.”_

“—know how long it takes me to brush all this? It takes forever!”

Atsuki heard a voice. It was a man’s voice, and he heard it as clearly as if it was being spoken by someone sitting as close as Natsuki, but nobody was there but her. He looked around anyway for good measure, but the people sitting closest to them were two young women, and they were still much farther away than that voice sounded. Atsuki focused his attention back on Natsuki and tried to forget it.

“The sunsets back home were so beautiful, I think I miss them the most. Besides my family and friends, obviously. I wish we could’ve watched them together, that would’ve been so wonderful. I—“

_“Atsuki, help me.”_

The voice sounded more desperate this time, and Atsuki completely lost his focus on what Natsuki was saying. He looked around again, but still didn’t see anyone who could’ve been asking for help. The women sitting near them were laughing and smiling too much to need help, and their voices weren’t even close to the one he heard. It definitely wasn’t Natsuki, but Atsuki still couldn’t find anyone else.

_“Please, help me. Hurry!”_

Atsuki quickly stood up and looked around once more before pushing his chair in.

“Hey, what’s wrong? You’ve barely been eating, do you feel okay?” Natsuki looked concerned and also stood up. “What’s going on?”

Atsuki had no idea how to explain what was going on, so he decided not to explain it at all. “…It’s nothing. I’ll be right back,” he told her, immediately heading off for the door. The more he focused on the voice, the more it sounded like it was coming from inside his head. Someone somewhere had to be messing with him, and he was going to find them.

“Are you sure?” Natsuki called out after him.

“Don’t worry,” he replied without looking back.

Nobody was out in the hallway, but the voice continued. _“Atsuki, please hurry!”_ the voice called out again. Whoever was speaking wasn’t there, so Atsuki kept walking. He couldn’t guess where he needed to go, and the voice wasn’t giving him any specifics, so he just wandered down one random hallway after another, waiting for something or someone to show up. For a moment, he wondered if this was entirely in his head and he had some serious issues he needed to get checked out, but the voice sounded so real he couldn’t give up looking.

He got so focused on the pleading for help he kept hearing that eventually he lost track of where he was. He was in a dark hallway, somewhere in FORT that he didn’t normally visit. He felt like he probably shouldn’t have been wherever he was, and planned on turning back soon, but something he found stopped him from doing so.

As soon as Atsuki rounded the corner, he saw a man lying on the floor, covered in blood. His chest was covered in bullet holes, and the dark blood on his body made a stark contrast with his white clothes, even in the dark lighting. “Help me…” he murmured, looking up at Atsuki. He was the person Atsuki had been hearing in his head. He was also the other man from his nightmare last night, and from the looks of him, he should have been dead.

The last time Atsuki saw someone covered in so much blood, it had been his little sister. He was frozen in that spot, unable to move or speak. All he could think of was her long hair lying in that endless pool of blood, her empty eyes looking at him but not seeing a thing, how cold and wrong and _dead_ she felt when he desperately tried to get her to wake up again, when he tried to shake her into life again, when he sat there and held her and screamed and screamed when he realized there was nothing he could do to bring her back.

“Atsuki…” The man spoke again, and Atsuki’s thoughts drifted back to him. He was still alive. He could still be helped. Atsuki moved closer, but every step he took felt like he was stepping through the ocean. His feet felt heavy and he felt nauseated, but he couldn’t stop. He knelt down in front of the man, and instantly felt his blood soaking into his pants. All of this was so painfully familiar he didn’t know how long he could handle it.

“How can I…” Speaking ended up being just as difficult as walking, and Atsuki had to focus on every word instead of the blood. “I don’t know how to help. Who did this to you?”

“Get away from him, Atsuki.”

The first thing Atsuki noticed when he looked up was the gun. It wasn’t pointed at him, it was pointed at the man who had already been shot half a dozen times. When he looked up from that, he saw Liu was the one holding the gun. Even though he had the gun pointed at the man on the floor, he was looking at Atsuki. “You shouldn’t have seen this,” Liu continued, looking frustrated, “Leave him alone.” He said it like it was an order, but Atsuki had absolutely no reason to do what he said.

“No,” Atsuki said defiantly, even though it might’ve been a bad tone to use since Liu was holding a gun and apparently wasn’t afraid to use it. “What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you attacking him?” Atsuki had a thousand questions for Liu, but he couldn’t go through them all now. He needed to get the man some sort of medical attention, but he didn’t think Liu was going to let him stroll off with him while he was still alive.

“ _Leave_ , Atsuki,” Liu repeated more firmly, taking a few steps closer. “You shouldn’t be here.” He still had the gun pointed at the man by Atsuki, and Atsuki still didn’t know how to get out of there with him. Liu turned out to be crazy, and he wasn’t going to let this go. He couldn’t think of any way both of them would get out of there without a few more bullet holes in them.

Atsuki hadn’t noticed Natsuki sneaking around the corner beyond them. He hadn’t noticed she had one of the fire extinguishers with her, and he didn’t even know she knew how to use one. But with Atsuki and Liu and maybe the dying man, if he was still awake, all so focused on each other, she had no trouble sneaking up on them and spraying Liu with the extinguisher before he could shoot anyone else. “Run, Atsuki!” Natsuki shouted, spraying Liu with the extinguisher as long as the foam kept coming out of it.

The man was still awake and fairly cooperative as Atsuki tried to get him to sit up as quickly as possible. It had to hurt him, but Atsuki managed to get the man on his back, with his arms holding him up and the man’s arms loosely around Atsuki’s neck.  He took off down the hallway again, as fast as he could go while carrying someone else, with Natsuki close behind. The man was lucky he was so light.

“I knew he was a murderer!” Natsuki snapped as she caught up to Atsuki and ran at his side, “He’s evil! He was going to kill you!”

Atsuki focused his energy and moving as quickly as he could instead of using it to respond to Natsuki. He didn’t have much to say anyway besides that Natsuki was probably right. It may not have taken much for Liu to turn that gun on him; he was lucky he wasn’t around long enough to find out for sure.

The farther the two of them got, the less familiar things started to look. Atsuki couldn’t remember patterns on the walls that looked like barbed wire anywhere in FORT. He didn’t remember the swirling patterns on the carpet either, and when he looked back behind him, he didn’t know what any of the shifting shadows in the darkest corners of the hallway were.

When Natsuki screamed and grabbed his arm, Atsuki looked forward again. Small creatures that looked like cotton balls with mustaches crawled out of the shadows and started to surround them, as the barbed wire patterns seemed to peel off the walls as the walls fell away. The patterns on the floor had begun to swirl around at some point, and Natsuki held on to Atsuki’s arm so tightly it hurt.

“Where are we?” Natsuki asked shakily.

The walls and ceiling were gone, and there was nothing but swirls and strange patterns and barbed wire where they used to be. The cotton creatures moved closer, looking more and more menacing as they approached. Atsuki couldn’t answer Natsuki. He didn’t know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate this fic but I don't want to be a quitter and drop it ahaha wow (⊙‿⊙ ✿)
> 
> No idea when the next chapter will be up, I haven't started it yet.


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